This invention relates generally to currency acceptors for validating paper money, and particularly to currency acceptors which can be readily configured to accept various sized paper currency without any loss of accuracy in the validation process caused by misalignment of the currency in the acceptor.
Paper bill or currency acceptors are commonly found in gaming or vending apparatus in order to receive paper money, to validate it and then provide a signal to the associated equipment, e.g., a slot machine (in the case of the gaming industry), a non-alcoholic beverage vending machine (in the case of the vending industry), etc. Examples of commercially available bill or currency acceptors are shown in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,834,230 (Kondo), 5,344,135 (Isobe et al.), and 5,372,361 (Isobe et al.).
As is known each of the devices shown in these patents and other commercially available currency validators typically include a path of a predetermined width through which the paper bill or note is carried by some carrier means, e.g., plural conveyor belts. A plurality of optical and magnetic sensors are mounted adjacent the path to sense various portions of the bill as it passes thereby, and to provide electrical signals responsive thereto to an associated microprocessor or control means (usually forming a portion of the validator or, in some cases, forming a portion of the apparatus to which the validator is connected) to determine if the bill is valid, and its denomination. If the bill is genuine the currency validator provides an output signal to the associated apparatus indicating that fact and the bill is transported to some receptacle within the apparatus. If the bill is determined not to be valid it is rejected or expelled out of the validator.
As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, the positioning of the bill within the path is somewhat critical to ensure that a good reading of the bill by the sensors can be achieved. Thus, if the bill is off position, e.g., not centrally located in the path, or skewed, the likelihood of a misread is increased.
While the prior art bill acceptor devices are suitable for their intended purposes they are of somewhat limited applicability due to the need to provide an optimized bill reading path for the specific currency for which they are designed. In this regard each of the bill or currency acceptors of the prior art is designed or optimized to accept one country's currency or one size of currency to ensure that the bill is in the desired position and orientation with respect to the path when moved therethrough by the conveyor to ensure the accurate reading thereof. For applications involving United States currency, since all of the bill are of the same size, the prior art bill or currency acceptors typically are designed to provide a path whose width is just slightly greater than the width of U.S. currency bills. It necessarily follows that a currency acceptor designed for U.S. currency cannot be readily utilized for foreign applications wherein the bill(s) to be validated has(have) a greater or lesser width. To that end, for foreign applications a different size acceptor must be provided to accommodate the width of the bill(s) of the native currency.
A need thus exists for paper currency acceptor/validators which can be readily configured or modified to be utilized for various sized paper currencies.